The book also provided inspiration for the name of a compilation album of B-sides by the Welsh rock group Manic Street Preachers, entitled Lipstick Traces (A Secret History of Manic Street Preachers). In 2005, the play was invited to join the New York Public Library's Dramatic Literature Archive. The play has been performed all across the United States- including a stint Off-Broadway in 2001- and in Salzburg, Austria. In 1999, the book was adapted into a stage production by Rude Mechanicals (a.k.a. The name 'Lipstick Traces' can be traced to the 1962 Benny Spellman song “ Lipstick Traces (on a Cigarette)” as an incomplete but indelible image of good public life' (p. 411).Ī 'soundtrack' to Lipstick Traces, compiling many of the songs referenced in the book, was released by Rough Trade Records in 1993.

'This book does not pretend to be a history of any of the movements it addresses,' the author writes (p. 414.) 'The events of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964 'formed a standard against which I've judged the present and the past ever since.

The book covers 20th century avant-garde art movements like Dadaism, Lettrist International and Situationist International and their influence on late 20th century countercultures and The Sex Pistols and punk movement. In Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus classic book on punk, Dadaism, the situationists, medieval heretics and the Knights of the Round Table (amongst others). Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989) is a non-fiction book by American rock-music critic Greil Marcus that examines popular music and art as a social critique of Western culture. Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Islandĭead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession

Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus